Burned

by Karen Marie Moning

  I stalk into Chester’s, hand on my spear, a wave of grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous Unseelie trailing me like a morbid bridal train.

  JADA

  At the top of the chrome and glass stair, the woman pauses and looks down. The air inside Chester’s just altered, charged by the presence of powerful newcomers.

  She is highly attuned to subtle nuances from years of training and meditation. She has battled blind and deaf. And won.

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  These auras are far from subtle.

  Three have entered from two different locations. She scans the dance floors, picking them out: there is the one called Ryodan, polished, bestial owner of this club; a second of the Nine known as Barrons, that keeps largely to the shadows¸ collector of antiquities and the most versed of them all in dark magic; and a young, blond woman that leads a small army of Unseelie as black as the shadowy nimbus that surrounds her.

  All exude enormous power.

  She glances at her bait, nude, perfect, and prime for the hook, then below.

  There are possibilities. There are choices.

  There is never emotion involved.

  Two of the three who’ve entered are on her list but each will be a difficult kill, taxing her many skills, and to attempt it with both present would be suicide.

  She plays to win at her choice of time, place, and method.

  As they move through the subclubs, approaching her, one from the east, two from the west, she aborts her mission, slips down the stairs and exits Chester’s.

  She will reconvene with the others, dispatch tasks for the night, move to the next name on her list.

  MAC

  Once, 939 Rêvemal Street was an elegant aboveground nightclub frequented by Dublin’s young, bored, and beautiful. It’s now a fetish-filled underground orgiastic ball from a Daliesque painting.

  The first time I came here was with Dani. It’s gotten a lot worse since then. Or better, depending on who you are and what you want.

  For the See-you-in-Faery girls, who call the Fae the new vamps, and will do virtually anything for the high of eating Unseelie flesh, the place is paradise. More Fae stake out their bizarre corner of the sex trade here every night.

  As I push into the mass of people, laughing, drinking, eating things I try really hard not to look at, I toss coolly over my shoulder, “How do you justify the number of people who get enslaved and killed here every night in order to grow your damned empire?”

  “Like prison camps, the darker side of Chester’s could only be born in a vacuum of morality. I didn’t create that vacuum,” he murmurs behind me, close to my ear. His hand on the small of my back, he steers me around a raucous tangle of mostly naked people.

  “But you exploit it. That’s just as bad. ”

  “We’re all animals. Wolf or sheep. Shark or seal. And some are useless strutting peacocks. ”

  I don’t dignify his barb with a response. Let him think me a peacock. Better that than the Sinsar Dubh walking.

  “I do nothing more than allow my patrons the right to choose which animal they aspire to be. If they say, ‘Excuse me, Mr. Ryodan, may I be lamb to the slaughter?’ I say, ‘Good-the-fuck-riddance. Quit breathing oxygen someone else deserves more. ’ ”

  “You despise them. ”

  “I don’t despise them. I despise what any warrior would. ”

  “Weakness? Not everyone can be as strong as you and me. ”

  He laughs softly, near my ear, that I put myself in his category. “I despise their willingness to die. Humans come to Chester’s of their own free will. I give them what they want. I’m not responsible for how fucking soulless their wants are. ” He closes a hand on my shoulder. “Slow down. You will first determine if there are other princesses in my club. Only when you’ve ascertained there are none will you ascend those stairs. ”

  I bristle but he’s right. I was hurrying, absorbing nothing. In my haste to eliminate anyone who could chain Barrons to a bed, I’d completely forgotten about searching for additional princesses.

  I stop walking and go completely still—well, as still as I can with my train of Unseelie that never interpret my body language correctly slamming into me with soft puffs of yellow dust.

  I push them away and permit the carnal madness of the place to wash over me, embrace it, open myself up and seek the lovely, cool sidhe-seer center in my mind.

  Use me. I’m better, the Sinsar Dubh purrs.

  I let Poe do my talking, refuse to engage. It pounces and runs with any answer I give, no matter how innocuous, like a psychotic ex-boyfriend craving emotional engagement. So long as I keep my mind occupied reciting the complex lines, I can’t hear the Book as well, and it has the added boon of keeping me from replying absently, distracted by external events.

  It used to be, when I first arrived in Dublin, that the presence of Fae made me nauseous, some more than others. I felt them in the pit of my stomach, a psychic acid. The afternoon I walked unwittingly into the Dark Zone adjacent to Barrons Books & Baubles, I’d nearly been on my knees puking for the final few blocks.

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  But repeated exposure to anything desensitizes—repeated exposure to Barrons excluded, of course, which seems to have the opposite effect—and lately on the rare occasions I’ve removed my carefully constructed blockade against the incessant din and reached out to sense Fae, in the absence of crippling nausea, I’ve discovered each caste emits a different frequency.

  In the acres of chrome and glass known as Chester’s, beyond what the average human ear can hear, there’s a secret symphony going on. It’s the music of the Fae: the guttural, militant hum of the Rhino-boys; the piercing chime of the tiny, flying, puckish death-by-laughter fairies that look deceitfully like exuberant Tinker Bells; the ominous knell of the red and black uniformed guard that once served Darroc; the siren-song of Dree-lia and her new consort, who looks so much like the deceased Velvet he must be his brother.

  I eliminate the diversity of each subclub until only one song remains: Seelie and Unseelie combined.

  It’s jarring, cacophonous. It gets on my last nerve. I wonder if they hear it, and if that’s why the dark and light courts tried to eliminate each other all those eons ago—they literally couldn’t stand each other’s music. Humans kill for less.

  If I could hear only the Seelie, it would be lovely. The Unseelie alone would be beautiful, too, in an eerie way. But together they chafe, antagonize, instilling and intensifying tension. I wonder how long we have until the light and dark courts war again, ripping apart our world in the process. For the moment, they’re drugged on the endless availability of pleasure to be had. I know better than to think it will last.

  I identify various castes and swiftly discard. There’s at least one Unseelie Princess in here, and if I isolate her frequency, I can scan for more.

  You’d think it would be so powerful, so unique, it would be easy to find.

  It’s not.

  I stand there for five solid minutes grasping and coming up empty-handed. I begin to worry she can conceal herself even from me.

  Behind me Ryodan and my Unseelie troop grow restless.

  “Mac, time’s wasting. What are you doing. ”

  “I’m working on it. Shush. ” I just got a flicker of an anomalous frequency somewhere upstairs. The anomaly fades. Then it seems to be nearing.

  “Do you feel something,” Ryodan says suddenly.

  Abruptly it vanishes.

  “Mac, I feel—ah, fuck, where’d it go. ”

  I think: What, Ryodan has sidhe-seer senses, too? Impossible. I sink deeper into my center, shed layers of muscle and skin, detach from everything and everyone, block out the world, block out myself. I become primal, ancient sidhe-seer without self, constraint, or definition.

  Then there’s something beyond the top of those stairs again, dark, chaotic and pounding, potently seductive, energizing, inflammatory
: a version of Wagner’s March of the Valkyries. From Hell. On steroids.

  Once I’ve got it burned into my brain, ears attuned for only it, I let the physical world back in, become me again, resettling into flesh and bone.

  And I realize why I had such a hard time pinpointing the princess.

  I wasn’t tuning myself out.

  The same dark march is coming from me.

  I open my eyes to find Ryodan watching me intently. “There is only one,” I say, and begin pushing through the crowd.

  There’s a simple explanation, I decide as we ascend the stairs, then turn down a long glass corridor. A complete copy of the Sinsar Dubh is inside me. I possess all the Unseelie King’s dark magic and spells from which he created his many castes. I probably sound like each and every one of them at varying times. I just never noticed it before because I had no reason to listen to myself.

  Still, as I prepare to place my palm to the right of the door leading into Ryodan’s office, I’m assaulted by a sudden image of whatever’s inside swiveling her head and saying, “Hey, sis, what’s up?” Since the day I arrived in Dublin, I’ve never been entirely certain who and what I am. I understand why Barrons rejects labels. You only know who you are in opposition to something, what you choose to fight for and against. The rest doesn’t matter.

  “Wait a minute. ” I turn back and am darkly amused to see that even my Unseelie “priests” have abandoned me. They huddle, facing one another, chittering with what almost seems nervous dissension ten feet behind Ryodan, who’s standing half the length of the corridor away from me, allowing no opportunity for the princess to turn him into a mindless sexual slave. I forget what I’m saying, momentarily distracted by that thought. I’m a monogamous woman. I don’t like to share. Yet the idea of this man as a mindless sexual slave is … I shake my head. This is Ryodan, I remind myself.

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  Then Barrons joins him and eclipses the notion. His eyes are brilliant, his body emanating heat and power. If I pressed my ear to his chest, his heart would be thudding, slow and strong.

  “How do you know what’s happening in there if you can’t see inside?” I ask Ryodan. The two-way glass is dark from the outside, transparent only from within.

  Ryodan places his cell phone on the floor and slides it across the slick glass floor. It stops at my feet. “Tap the Skull and Crossbones app. ”

  Of course, he has an app for everything. Figures he’d be able to watch the central hub of his universe from the phone that shouldn’t work, via an otherworldly Wi-Fi network that doesn’t exist.

  I open the app, blink once then forget how to. “Oh, my gosh, he’s … that can’t be … holy cow. ” My face gets hot.

  “Give me a break,” Ryodan says irritably. “And give me my phone back. ”

  I want to keep it. See what else is on there. I’ve heard rumors there’s a level in this club reserved only for the Nine.

  Barrons snorts. Barrons has reason to snort. I got the best one. I glance up and give him a charged look.

  Yes, you did.

  “Quit procrastinating,” Ryodan says. “And get rid of the bitch. My phone. ” He extends his hand.

  Not a chance. Not when I’m not sure how the princess will react to me.

  I place my palm on the wall and the door whisks aside with a faint hydraulic hiss. Sex slams me in the face, scorching, drugging, volatile.

  “I said, my phone. ”

  I stand at the threshold and look in. The princess has her back to me, and Lor is beyond noticing anything. Ryodan and Barrons are another matter. They’re too observant by far. There is also the small matter of the enormous possessiveness I feel where Barrons is concerned.

  I step inside and place my palm on the interior panel.

  Two males roar in unison.

  “Ms. Lane, you will not close—”

  “Mac, you will give me my fucking—”

  The door hisses closed behind me.

  12

  “We are family, I got all my sisters with me”

  MAC

  Once I would have thought what was taking place in Ryodan’s office was no more than what it appeared to be: an Unseelie of the royal caste subjugating a human, getting drunk on the pleasure they siphon from our souls. Immortal, jaded, void of anything that passes as passion, Fae royalty is incapable of emotion, but they can experience it through a human vessel. Especially during sex. Or torture. Preferably both at the same time. They either use the human up completely and kill it or leave a shell of a sex-starved slave. Death is the better option there.

  But the Unseelie Princes just shocked the hell out of me, proved themselves to be ambitious and goal-oriented, willing to adopt a mien of civility to achieve their aims, and channel what used to be a maelstrom of uncontrolled hunger into deliberated action.

  Considering the Fae have always been matriarchal, I have reason to assume the princesses are no less driven or capable of evolving than their dark counterparts. I wonder where they’ve been all this time. Feeding in private? Learning self-discipline and -control? Plotting to take over our world?

  She’s not throwing off the whirlwind of insanity and insatiability with which the princes first razed our world when freed from their prison, nor does she seem bent on the vicious, obsessive hunt of the Crimson Hag determined to complete her gut-gown. She appears composed, even dispassionate. I consider that perhaps like human women, she’s not as governed by hormones, or whatever passes as Fae motivation, as the males. Perhaps the genders of any species share certain traits. As far as I know, it’s the female Fae that bears what few young they manage, and may be biologically more pragmatic, to ensure their offspring’s survival. I hope so because I don’t want to kill her. Not now, not here with so many humans in the vicinity. As much as I want her dead, I have to find another way.

  Then arrange a safer place to hunt her.

  I take a deep, slow breath and release it. “We could cut to the chase,” I say to her beautiful back. Iridescent, sparkling tattoos shimmer on each side of her spine, furling and unfurling as if caressed by a sultry Fae breeze only she can feel. They vaguely resemble wings.

  Silver embellishments glitter along her backbone as if she’s adorned her spine with metal piercings, with more of them on each side of her neck. Though immune to Fae thrall, watching Lor do what he’s doing to her is getting me hot and bothered in a purely human way. No wonder the blondes keep lining up at his bed. He’s a massive, lethal lion of muscle, sex, and power. He growls as he grinds up into her, and the sound is so rough and ready, so freaking hot and sexy, that my heart begins to hammer in the back of my throat and my mouth goes dry. I swallow hard and wet my lips before I continue, “What do you want?”

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  She glances over her shoulder with that telltale inhuman head swivel, assesses and disregards me.

  She should take a deeper look.

  “Mac, get her the fuck off me,” Lor snarls. Then he groans again, in spite of himself.

  “You will not speak,” the princess commands Lor, and just like that he loses control of his vocal cords. Nice talent. I wouldn’t mind having it myself.

  “I said, What do you want?” I repeat coldly.

  “Nor will you speak,” she hisses over her shoulder at me.

  My vocal cords don’t feel any different. I test them by clearing my throat. It works.

  Her head swivels again and she rakes an imperious, frosty glance from my boots to my hair. Her hips never stop moving. “What are you?”

  “The one not killing you,” I say, working hard to ignore the graphic sex happening right in front of me. “For the moment. What. Do. You. Want. ” I push my hair back, not surprised to realize it’s damp, I’m actually sweating from watching them have sex. I’m overdue for some of my own.

  “You are not human. ”

  “I am, too,” I say flatly. I may not be sure of much, but I was born. I was ca
rried in a womb. And infected there.

  “My power works on everything but Fae of the royal castes. ”

  “You didn’t come here to have sex,” I evade. “You could do that anywhere. You came specifically to this club and chose specifically him. Why?” It’s a ballsy move, stalking so openly into Chester’s, alone, targeting one of the Nine and turning him Pri-ya in the owner’s office. Why haven’t we seen any of the princesses before? Cruce claimed all the Seelie were dead. He’d also claimed no Unseelie Princesses were made. Was anything he told me true? Where has she been? Is she newly arrived, jockeying for position by abducting one of the most powerful males in the city?

  She wets blue lips and tilts her head to the side. Her eyes darken to inky pools that are suddenly neon cobalt. Beyond long, thick lashes, vertical slitted pupils dilate and shrink, dilate again as if she’s taking my measure with vision humans don’t possess. For a moment I think I glimpse stars in those pupils. She’s different from the princes. There’s a … vastness to her that exceeds theirs.

  He made us last. We are his best. Enhanced.

  Without thinking, I seek confirmation of that from the only place I could possibly get it.

  Yes, open me, read me, it agrees instantly.

  I sigh, resuming my chant, imagining Poe would enjoy that although his narrator was unable to silence the bird, his poem silences my book.

  But the Raven still beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door …

  The princess’s eyes narrow, as if she hears my inner dialogue but can make no sense of it.

  “Cruce said he was the king’s last,” I say. “And best. ”

  “There are things Cruce does not know. Where is our brother?”

  “Dead,” I lie.

  “Did you kill him?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  There go the pupils again, dilating, narrowing. “It seems you would offer aid. I am unconvinced you possess anything that may interest us. ”

  “Perhaps we share common desires. ” Where did this cold place inside me come from? Is it because I sat with my rapists tonight and made pacts? Or because I know how much I have to lose if I don’t stay cold? “I have a great deal to offer. If the price is right. It’s you who may not have enough to barter with. ”